Taylor, Lang & Co
| Limited | |
| Industry | Textile machinery |
| Successor | Textile Machinery Makers Ltd |
| Headquarters | Stalybridge, England |
Taylor, Lang & Co. was a textile machinery manufacturer based in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England.
The company was founded in 1852 as a tradesmen's co-operative with twenty-three members. It was originally known locally as 'The Amalgamated Shop'. The name 'Taylor Lang' may have originated in 1859.
Taylor, Lang & Co. was based at the Castle Iron Works on Grosvenor Street, Stalybridge. The founders worked long hours at a reduced wage until the business was well-established and later became known all over the world as Taylor Lang's. The company designed and manufactured cotton spinning machinery, distributing to a global market. In the 1920s it acquired Lord Bros. of Todmorden.
In the recession of the 1930s, Platt Brothers, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey, Asa Lees, Dobson and Barlow, Joseph Hibbert, John Hetherington and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd. Taylor, Lang & Co. was the largest company outside this group, but was acquired in 1936. The individual units continued to trade under their own names until 1970, when they were rationalised into one company, Platt UK Ltd. In 1991, this company became Platt Saco Lowell.
Taylor, Lang & Co. was established in April/May 1852, with a capital of £600. The founders were mechanics in Oldham, but worked in their spare time in a co-op grocery shop where they talked over the idea of applying the cooperative approach to engineering. In January 1852 an industrial dispute (known as "The Great Lock Out") in the Manchester and Oldham district engineering industry led to them being thrown out of permanent employment ("locked out"). Consequently, twenty-three of these workmen came together and set up as cooperative machine makers (machinists). The original members were:
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